Saturday, November 4, 2017

The 29th International Racquetball Federation (IRF) World Junior Racquetball Championships will begin Sunday in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There are 13 countries represented this year. Mexico, Bolivia and USA have been the countries to beat the last few year's, and we expect that to be the case this year as well.

The competition has three days of group play (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday) that will be used to seed players for a playoff round of competition that will begin on Wednesday. The finals will be next Saturday.

One of the players to watch will be Guatemala's Gabriela Martinez, who has won six gold medals at World Juniors, and will be playing her first year of U18. Her biggest competition could come from Jordan Cooperrider (USA) and Maria Jose Munoz (Ecuador), who were the bronze medalists in U18 last year, as well as Mexicans Montserrat Mejia and Erin Rivera.

In Boy's U18, Set Cubillos of Colombia is the only medalist from last year in the field this year. But Eduardo Portillo of Mexico, who won gold in U16 last year, is playing U18 this year, as is his team-mate Gerardo Franco. Also, Mauro Rojas of the USA should be a strong contender for the podium as well.

The IRF will be streaming some of the live from Minneapolis, so check out the IRF YouTube channel and their page on Facebook.